So really the issue is people are doing something illegal and getting busted for it. The government is aware that people will routinely break said law and are profiting off it.

So the real issue is that the government is acting as a for-profit organization, right? That still doesn't negate that people are breaking the law and getting busted for it. If the drivers followed the speed limit, then the government couldn't profit off them, now could they? *smacks forehead*

See, with red light cameras there's a legitimate argument to be made. If a driver is following the speed limit, and break safely, there is a set time the yellow light should progress in order to insure compliance and safety. So for instance, if a vehicle traveling at 30MPH takes 10 seconds to come to a slow, controlled stop, the yellow should last for 12 seconds to ensure the drivers a reasonable time to notice the light change and react. (Normal human reaction time is between .3 to 2 seconds.)

So if the government sets the yellow to only 5 seconds, this creates an unsafe and unreasonable margin. And then, if the safest and more sane thing to do is "run the red" and are subsequently ticketed, then that's entrapment. That is wrong, and is something someone can complain about.

Complaining that you got caught speeding, well, boohoo for you. Don't speed. No one is forcing you to speed. So it's your own damn fault, no matter if the government is profiting off it or what video is posted.

If what you're really complaining about is that the actual design of the road triggers a natural response to travel at a "perceived safe speed" (which is a real thing) and the limit is set to a lower than needed limit, then that's something you can complain about. Still doesn't mean speeding isn't illegal.

Speed traps don't work in general. All they trigger is a momentary change in behavior and once the negative force is removed, the behavior continues. But because of the quota systems placed by "hard on crime" Republicans, real change isn't going to happen. Instead what you're seeing is a systematic failure of a rewards and punishment system that has long been proven to be ineffective and counter-productive.

Instead, if they really want to slow speeds, they should redesign the road and perhaps do a road diet, re-stripe the lanes, use bricks or plant trees (which is illegal by DOT standards btw - they hurt cars if they crash, but people don't, so it's better to hit people than trees - no joke, literally their logic.)

Or, if you're worried the police force is resorting to the quota and a misguided broken windows policy, then that's something to address. You're lack of ability to lay off the gas pedal is not a "liberties" issue or the "man putting you down."

The focus is totally misguided and the video is proof.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'meteorite, russia, karata, brokem windows' to 'meteorite, russia, judo, broken windows' - edited by kulpims

>> ^renatojj:
uh... the broken window fallacy doesn't seem to apply here because manufacturing Lamborghinis is actually profitable, it's completely voluntary (people are free to do more productive things than build or buy a Lamborghini, if they want) and there's no destruction of someone else's property in that process. Unlike mass murder, wars or breaking a window.
You clearly consider yourself better than most people when it comes to directing humanity's resources, maybe you should run for office.


Paying $200,000 for a sports car is comparable to paying five people $40,000 each to spend a year digging and refilling holes. Nothing of value has been produced, five man-years of human productivity have been destroyed; it's economic vandalism.

@gorillaman, uh... the broken window fallacy doesn't seem to apply here because manufacturing Lamborghinis is actually profitable, it's completely voluntary (people are free to do more productive things than build or buy a Lamborghini, if they want) and there's no destruction of someone else's property in that process. Unlike mass murder, wars or breaking a window.

You clearly consider yourself better than most people when it comes to directing humanity's resources, maybe you should run for office.

>> ^ChaosEngine:
You act as though the labour and resources went into a black hole. Engineers were employed, research was done, factories were built, money was made and families were fed.
A crime against humanity? Are you seriously comparing owning a fucking car to this, or this or this? I really hope you're joking.

This is the broken window fallacy.

At least mass murder is good for the environment. Burning the equivalent of five man-years of labour on one car just to feed your vanity, and making the whole world poorer in the process, is a pure evil.

It's somewhat fake. @1:25 you can see the the main firefighter has palmed a spring loaded hole punch window breaker. And @ :58 you can see in the top left corner of the broken window is a the hole he punched to weaken the integrity of the window. The tapping from the second firefight stressed it enough to fully break.

@Grimm - At the risk of stating the obvious, don't you think it's more logical to believe that Reagan's loyalty to big money (and ALL of his predecessors) might have played a dominant role in the degradation of American public education, rather than the fact that a Department of Education exists? Boise laid out a number of deliberate poison pills in his comment. You've merely asserted your claim without any rational other than an arbitrary number of trips around the sun.

Let's say you buy a new car, and I tell you I hate it and intend to pop the tires, break the windows and light it on fire after you go to sleep. If the next morning you wake up to find your car on fire, with popped tires and broken windows, would you take it back to the dealer and claim the car was faulty? This, in essence, is what you are doing here.

If I were you, the logical counter argument would be, "well there you go, you've made my case, a malicious or subservient (take your pick) president was able to have a hugely negative effect on education nationally. Had it been left to the states, our educational system would be a utopic wonderland."

To which I would respond, "If big money can compromise a huge government, what makes you think they couldn't eat a state house for champagne brunch?"

The problem with libertarians is that they are unwitting allies of the corporate state. They believe that getting rid of government would end authoritarianism, completely failing to understand that the kind of authoritarianism that haunts our country would prefer to be unrestrained by government too. Right libertarianism, if enacted, would indeed provide more liberty to a handful of wealthy and powerful people, but it would come at the cost of liberty to the vast majority. 1% vs 99% if you will. Sound familiar? I see no clear difference between libertarianism and social Darwinism. If you respond to any of this, I'd most like to know how you differentiate libertarianism from social Darwinism.

I think a vast amount of people would prefer the liberty of healthcare, education, roads, fire departments, police departments, schools and libraries to the liberty to dominate a labor force, the liberty to pollute the environment with impunity, the liberty to manipulate the banking system or the liberty to build bloody corporate empires on foreign shores. What makes you think the business men that took us to war in the middle east wouldn't be twice as brutal without a single shred of oversight or transparency? What makes you think deregulated labor markets wouldn't revert back to pre-regulation era slavery if given the option?

If social Darwinism is what you truly desire, then we have nothing more to say to each other. However, if you want to stop authoritarianism, then stop trying to make it easier for authoritarians to thrive. Ron Paul is a nice fella and all - an adorable little grandfatherly gnome even - and I take him at his word when he says he believes his economic hypothesis would create liberty. Unfortunately, reality begs to differ. And, sincerity is no excuse for bad ideas.

Good debate. Peace.

You can join the convo too if you like @GeeSussFreeK

That's a good summary of the Keynesian response. I guess my answer would be that even supposing the 10% unemployed were neatly then employed in building these weapons this would just be temporary. Later they will eventually all be unemployed again having wasted time and money in training for "fictional" work. Even if that work had some beneficial side effects, making unnatural economic growth will still be a net cost to the economy versus spending time finding real jobs. These are what they really 'should' in some sense be doing. To do this would surely be better unless you claim the 10% will continue unemployed permanently.

A typical argument against my response is that the economy is like a pump and that this is pump priming. Demand from these people's fictional labour will create the new jobs. The Austrian reply to that is that the pump metaphor is simply not valid and the economies grow organically. If you force a branch to grow with artificial sunlight, when that fake light gets turned off the branch will wither and all the people involved in its support spend a lot of time looking for what they should have been doing. I think Hayek would claim this type of fake labour policy is what causes the 10% unemployment to begin with.

These arguments can be seen in the two Hayek/Keynes rap videos. There are two inconsistent models of the economy. How can we decide which one is right? This argument is very old so I guess it's not that easy... Maybe look at long run growth in more and less interventionist countries? I suspect growth will be faster in the less interventionist nation.


>> ^NetRunner:
>> ^pyloricvalve: Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way.. I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital. That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash. The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now. Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake. Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way..


I think that's the real problem with the broken window "fallacy" -- it assumes that as your starting point you already have full employment and no idle infrastructure or capital.

That's not true in our situation at all. Unemployment is around 10%, factories are being left idle, and companies are sitting on mountains of cash.

The idea here is to get people back to work doing something, because even if they're producing things there isn't a high demand for (windows, alien-fighting spaceships), it's not like those things come at the cost of the other things they would've otherwise been producing, since they're not producing anything at all right now.

Oh, and in the case of alien-fighting spaceships, there's a pretty high chance that the technology and industrial infrastructure that's developed to build them will be able to be re-purposed for consumer goods once the alien threat is shown to be fake.

Ideally instead of faking an alien invasion, we'd just have the government go and invest directly in our infrastructure (transportation, education, power generation), but without the alien threat it doesn't seem like Congress is willing to engage in any more fiscal stimulus, no matter how economically sound it would be.

Just seems like straight up broken windows fallacy. If we spent 18 months preparing for war with aliens we might all be employed but we'd end up with a bunch of weapons pointed at the sky. Otherwise we could have spent the time making ipods, cars or whatever good or service you might want. Doesn't what he's saying just sound wrong? It clearly would not be a good thing for the world to spend 18 months that way..

The Broken Window Fallacy

Broken windows fallacy!

The leaps in logic needed to have created this ordinance, are astounding.
They did the LAST thing that should be done.

First, they could have created the system, without it being mandatory, so that anyone who wanted to join in, could do so if they wanted to.

Secondly, anyone who didn't want to participate in the system, would automatically forfeit their right to sue city hall and the fire department over a broken window or door in case of a false alarm.

And only as a third and stupid option would someone create this mandatory system for everyone. It's absolutely ridiculous

Lyrics:


Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Black and yellow [x4]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Black and yellow [x4]

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]

[Verse 1:]
Black flag, yellow star, them commies scared of it, got my war paint
Soon as I hit the forum, crack keynes, instant faint
Hit the podium once make them liberals shake
State inflates, now the prices soaring
A failed policy, you know the people payed for it
And you know we dig them precious metals
We callin on your horseshit game we balling out on every level
Hear them statists talk but there's nothing you can tell 'em
Fed prints a trillion, got another trillion on their schedule
No love for central planners breaking hearts
No state, free market art

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray , I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]

[Verse 2:]
Got a call from Tom Woods, this just in
Bitches love me for my non-aggressive means and ends
Neo-Lockean? Maybe. The market's free, yo.
This ain't the new deal, it's the real deal no joe blow
I'm sipping Four Loko and puffin on the ganja
You social engineers will never stop the marijuana
Statists act like bitches, Tyler Perry
I ball out while Ron Paul does some commentary

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray , I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]


[Verse 3:]
Stay praxeological like I'm supposed to do
Broken window fallacy, them Keynesians cant get over you
And our crew look unapproachable
We're with Rothbard, Bitch, we go hard

They wanna fuck with the market, monopolize, constrict, get high, talk shit and that's that Real crap, depression but, they said we wouldn't feel that, they took the blue pill, or must just be on crack

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
(emotional appeals ain't shit, it all comes back to economics, bitch)
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]